The following is a Grad Paper and was
written and submitted by Dave LaFontana of Harvard University,
Massachusetts. A very big special thank you to Dave in allowing the Ottawa
Beatle Site to e-publish his Grad Paper. Copyright by Dave
LaFontana, July 10, 2003. First e-published by the Ottawa Beatles Site,
October 30, 2003. All rights reserved. Photos presented below were used in
his Grad Paper.

You Say You Want a Velvet
Revolution?

John Lennon and the Fall of the
Soviet Union

The Lennon Wall, Prague Czech
Republic

(photo care of the “Bagism” website:
http://www.bagism.com/ )

Dave
LaFontana

History
E-108/W

History of the
20th Century: 1951-2000

Grad
Paper

July 10,
2003

Introduction

For a time
during the Vietnam War, many Americans saw John Lennon as a threat. By 1968, the
once-loveable mop top had morphed into a “New Left” revolutionary agitator,
another “guerilla minstrel” the likes of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. These
radical folk singers in their time were considered—like Lennon was considered
during Vietnam—a cultural force powerful enough to eventually pose a threat to
the domestic stability of the US.

In America
in the early 70s, many conservative Americans—including Strom Thurmond, Richard
Nixon, and J. Edgar Hoover—considered (publicly at least) John Lennon’s radical
leftist peace activism a subversive, communist-influenced force. A decade after
J. Edgar Hoover warned against the Communists using “mass agitation” within
“specialized fields: among women, among youth, among veterans, among racial and
nationality groups, farmers, trade unions,1” Lennon and Yoko Ono were protesting on behalf of
almost every group on the list.

They
declare themselves feminists, protest the Vietnam War, call for the release of
imprisoned Black Panther Angela Davis, call for the release of imprisoned “White
Panther” (and drug offender) John Sinclair, and demand that Britain “leave
Ireland for the Irish,” all on one album alone 2. The fact that Lennon’s musical career with the
Beatles gave him influence over American youth concerned many officials in the
Nixon White House, since his fame would make him a powerful draw at politically
charged anti-Nixon concerts and rallies before the 1972 election. Not
surprisingly, the highly paranoid Nixon Administration (working through the FBI)
eventually targeted Lennon for deportation. As funny as it may seem today,
Lennon at this time was seen as—or at the very least treated as—a grave
danger to the American way of life. However, hindsight has confirmed the
opposite. John Lennon’s work—as a Beatle, with the Plastic Ono Band, and as a
solo performer—has proven to be quite beneficial to western-style democracy and
consumer capitalism in two distinct ways.

First and
foremost, the music of Lennon and the Beatles was major triumph — both
ideologically and commercially—for the West during the Cold War, a cultural
explosion that not only triggered a demand for western products (like record
albums, electric guitars, and blue jeans) by Soviet and Eastern European youths,
but also bettered their perceptions of the West.

Secondly,
Lennon was very much in line with the idea of “Socialism with a Human Face,” the
idea of that was initially voiced by Czech leader Alexander Dubcek in 1968, and
strongly influenced those in Gorbachev’s generation, a new breed of Communist
leadership. Lennon’s message of peace and social justice in many ways matched,
in some cases tested, and in one highly-important case—Charter 77 in
Czechoslovakia—even influenced the concepts of Glasnost and
Perestroika.

Lennon
and the Beatles: a Threat to America?

Back in
1776

We fought the
British then, folks.

Parents of
America,

It's time to
do it again, folks.

When they
come back, here's how we'll begin,

We'll throw
'em in Boston harbor.

But please,
before we toss 'em all in,

Let's take
'em to a barber.

- Lyrics
from Allan Sherman’s 1964 novelty song

“Pop Hates
the Beatles"

As the
popular early 60s comedic singer Sherman satirized in his song “Pop Hates the
Beatles,” not everyone in Britain and America loved the Beatles as much as the
young people did. At the outset of Beatlemania, parents, politicians, members of
the clergy, and other establishment figures worried that the morals of Western
youth would be corrupted by the Beatles, and that the youth that flocked to the
Beatles were no more than the “least fortunate of their generation, the dull,
the idle, the failures” and a “fearful indictment of our educational
system.3”

This was
much as parents had worried ten years earlier about “Elvis the Pelvis.” But
Elvis redeemed himself in the eyes of many parents in both Britain and America
thanks to a two-year stint in the US Army in West Germany. By the end of the
60s, the Beatles—John Lennon in particular—had managed to alienate themselves
even further from the American establishment: their hair got longer, their
cloths got more outlandish and colorful, their drug use became obvious, and
their music became more experimental (or even downright cacophonous). In
Lennon’s case the message became radicalized. The American youth counterculture
of the late Sixties was not entirely a product of the Beatles and the British
Invasion—extended prosperity4and the Vietnam War were the main causes—but popular
culture and fashion were so changed by the musical phenomenon that it was easy
for many older Americans to see it as such. For the World War II generation who
had fought without question for their country—and had real fears of Communism
knocking down countries like dominoes—the thought of subversive forces within
their youth, working through drug-using “Hippies,” radical student activists,
and left-leaning celebrities protesting a war against Communist North Vietnam
was seen with real dread. Many feared that American youth culture was crawling
with a “pink-tinged” infiltration of Communism in America.

The
Beatles provided the soundtrack for the young generation, and from early on many
American fundamentalist ministers and churchgoers had eyed them suspiciously. In
1966, Lennon had claimed that “Christianity will fade” and Beatles were “bigger
than Jesus,” setting off anti-Beatle rallies and record burnings through the
South and in places like Boston, eventually forcing him to apologize. “What have
the Beatles said or done to so ingratiate themselves with those who eat, drink,
and think Revolution?” asked David Noebel, author of a series of anti-Beatle
tracts beginning in 1965. “The major value to the left in general…has been their
usefulness in destroying youth’s faith in God.5” 1968’s “Revolution” raised eyebrows again. While
Lennon did disavow Chairman Mao and anger many far left radicals by stating
“count me out” of violent action, his message on one version of the song also
said to count him “in;” he was remaining ambiguous on purpose since he hadn’t
really made up his mind on it. American right-wingers complained about the song
by arguing that Lennon and the Beatles were merely middle-of-the-road
subversives warning the Maoists not to ‘blow’ the revolution by pushing too
hard.6Paul didn’t help the band’s standing in
many people’s eyes by admitting publicly to using the dreaded LSD, as well as
describing the band’s new company, Apple Corps (what could be thought of as an
attempt at “People’s Venture Capitalism7”) “western-styled Communism” on The Tonight
Show.8

As the
Vietnam War dragged on, Lennon and Yoko Ono took their peace activism to more
radical levels, having highly-publicized “bed-ins” in Amsterdam and Canada and
recording songs like “Working Class Hero” and “Power to the People.” Lennon was
soon considered a new “Guerilla Minstrel,” much in the vein of Pete Seeger and
Woody Guthrie, both of whom sang protest songs and were members—or were thought
to be members—of the Communist Party.9

Lennon
began to financially support the legal funds of controversial figures like
Michael Abdul Malik, a.k.a. “Michael X,” a black Muslim radical from Britain who
was eventually tried, convicted, and hanged in 1975 for the murder of two
associates.10He also began to publicly flaunt a
leftist, sometimes downright Communist ideology. In a 1971 interview, Lennon
complained that the class system of the west “hadn’t changed one bit,” and
called on the middle class to “repatriate the people and get out of all that
bourgeois shit.11” Even one of his most peaceful songs, “Imagine,”
Lennon envisions a world with no religion, private possessions, or national
boundaries, in other words a socialist, humanistic utopia.

But it was
John and Yoko’s association with famous, or rather infamous members of the “New
Left,” like Jerry Rubin, Rennie Davis, and Abbie Hoffman that got them unwanted
attention from the federal authorities.12Rubin, Davis, and Hoffman were all members of “The
Chicago Seven,” and at least one—Rubin—was listed in FBI as an “Extremist” and
“Key Activist.13”

By 1972,
Lennon and Ono had released SomeTime in New York City, an album containing songs protesting the imprisonment
of radicals Angela Davis

and John Sinclair, the
troubles in Northern Ireland, and women’s lib. The song “John Sinclair,” and
Lennon’s participation in the 1971 Ann Arbor, Michigan rally protesting
Sinclair’s imprisonment, would eventually lead President Nixon and the FBI to
give Lennon and Ono special attention, investigating his anti-war activities,
and trying to have him deported.14

The FBI
classified Lennon as “Security Matter—New Left,” and later upgraded him to
“Security Matter—Revolutionary Activities.15” In another FBI memo dated March 16, 1972, the New
York branch office of the Bureau warned that Lennon was of a group that was
planning “to coordinate New Left movement activities during this election year.”
In the memo, a paragraph on New Left radical Stewart “Stu” Albert identified him
incorrectly as associated with the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). The
implication was clear: Lennon was associating with Communists.16

Hoover himself sent a memo on
Lennon warning of his intentions of assisting in “organizing disruption of RNC
[the Republican National Convention in San Diego, California, in August
1972].17” Hoover also mentioned Lennon in a memo to Nixon
dated January 23, 1972 warning the President about Chicago Seven Defendant
Rennie Davis’ future protest activities at the RNC.18

Even
Lennon’s childhood hero, Elvis, didn’t trust him. During his visit to the White
House on December 21, 1970, Presley told President Nixon that he was concerned
for the youth of America, and feared that they had been seduced to drugs and
immorality by the “filthy, unkempt appearance and suggestive music of the
Beatles.19” He was unhappy that the Beatles were taking so much
money out of America and back to England. Presley referred to them as
“anti-American” accused them of saying “anti-American stuff when they got back
[to England].20

+ + +

So, the
question stands, was Lennon truly a Communist, hoping to knock down the American
system? Those who knew him seem to think not. His radicalism seemed more naďve
than sinister. Lennon was a product of the times, much as the rest of the
counterculture. As many people close to him have said, Lennon felt guilty that
he was a rich, privileged rock star, living a cushy life during turbulent times.
Albert Goldman notes in The Lives of John Lennon that later in life,
Lennon dismissed his radical period as something he dabbled in “more out of
guilt than anything else. Guilt for being rich and guilt for thinking that peace
and love isn’t enough, and you have to go and get shot or punched in the face to
prove I’m one of the people. I was doing it [i.e. taking part in radical
politics] against my instincts.21”

He was a
also peace activist who realized that to succeed in his goals, he needed
publicity, money, and a far-reaching medium—i.e. healthy sales of John and Yoko
records, books, etc.—to work. At a press conference at the Ontario Science
Center in promotion of the “John and Yoko Peace Festival,” Lennon was asked what
got him started in the peace campaign. He answered by recalling getting a letter
from filmmaker Peter Walkins, who told Lennon “People in our position have a
responsibility especially to use the media for world peace.”

It’s not
surprising that in a period of intense popular anger at the government, Lennon
would call attention to himself as in line with the counterculture as it became
increasingly radical. As cynical as it might sound, it sold records. Once his
activities with the New Left became a liability to his personal interests (i.e.
staying in America), Lennon and Ono backed off their political commitments “in a
panic flight.22”

_________________________

In his
book The Love You Make: an Insider’s Story of the Beatles, Peter Brown,
the director of NEMS as well as Lennon’s best man at his wedding to Yoko,
referred to him as “just ripe for the far-left, publicity conscious brand of
politics,” and that Lennon was “by instinct part socialist, part right-wing
Archie Bunker; to be an indolent, wealthy rock star would have made him feel
guilty as sin, Yet the passionate politician he was to become was a phoney pose,
possessed with the guilty enthusiasm of a hypocrite.23” But Lennon was truly for peace in Vietnam
and women’s liberation, and regardless of his leftist leanings, he
never spoke out againstCapitalism, in fact, he freely admitted to
using Capitalism to his own goals. At the Toronto press conference, Lennon
was asked how long he and Yoko were planning on leaving up their “War is Over”
billboards (like the one in New York City pictured at
right24). “We’d like to have as much money as Coca Cola and
Ford to be able to keep up [the “War Is Over” billboards]” he answered, “we
think advertising’s the game, and is the way to do it, and we’d like to have the
posters there all the time, and when you turn on the TV, they’re saying ‘Drink
Peace.’” He said of the song “Revolution” that even though he was dabbling with
the idea of socialism, he freely admitted playing the Capitalist
thing.25 He even jeered at his own hypocrisy when returning
his MBE to the Queen. In his note, he stated that he was returning it in protest
of Britain’s involvement in “the Nigeria-Biafra thing,” its endorsement of
America in Vietnam and that “Cold Turkey” was “slipping down the
charts.26”

Nixon
probably didn’t really think Lennon was truly a Communist, but he did have a
history of using Communism as a method for eliminating political enemies, such
as he did during the 1950 California Senate race against progressive Democrat,
feminist activist, and former actress Helen Gahagan Douglas, dubbed “the Pink
Lady.” Former Beatle John Lennon working to mobilize the country’s youth to vote
him out of office would definitely qualify him an enemy in Nixon’s eyes. Even
the Feds’ own informants were not convinced he was truly a dangerous or
subversive force. In a confidential informant report sent by the New York FBI
office, the informer makes a significant statement that an unnamed person “had
numerous conversations with John Lennon and his wife about becoming active in
the New Left movement in the United States and that Lennon

and his wife seemed
uninterested…Lennon and his wife are passé about United States
politics.27” In another report, an FBI confidential informant
reported that Lennon said he would participate in demonstrations at the
Republican National Convention only “if they are peaceful. 28”

Meanwhile, Back in the
U.S.S.R…

“Don’t be
such a ‘bitels’”

My papa tells
me

My mama, like
my mama says:

”To the
barber go!

’cause the
barber’s running

after you
with scissors.

Cut off your
shaggy hair!

Shame on you
son, shame!”

- Lyrics from
popular Polish singer

Czeslaw
Nieman’s mid 1960s novelty song

“Don’t Be
such a Bitels29”

As we
discussed in class during the semester, during the Cold War both the Western and
Soviet societies tended to mirror one another’s trends and fears. The west had
McCarthyism; the east had Zhadovism, for example.30And not surprisingly, this phenomenon showed itself
in the appearance of both a Western and Eastern counterculture. Just as singers
like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were condemning racism and injustice in
coffeehouses in America, West German-born singer Wolf Biermann was criticizing
Stalinist East German ideologues, and the Berlin Wall.31And, while Beatlemania was turning western fashion
trends and pop culture on its ear, it was doing the same in the Eastern Europe
and eventually the Soviet Union. Official and parental reaction to the
counterculture upheaval Beatlemania brought in its wake was no different than
their western counterparts. But the sinister, subversive powers corrupting the
youth were feared by the Soviets to be a tool of the Capitalistic, decadent,
imperialist west. Krokodil
(Crocodile), an all-Union satirical
magazine, compared the Beatles with U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater - an insult in
the then USSR. 32

Western
authorities were not only leery of rock music and the counterculture left, but
also the influence of older college professors they feared were using their
influence in the classroom to destroy the American system from within. Eastern
authorities were likewise worried about western jazz and rock and roll, western
influences on the young “hooligan” counterculture, but also the more
liberal minded authorities in Bloc countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia they
feared were using their influence to destroy the Soviet system from
within.

Leaders like Alexander Dubcek
in Czechoslovakia had granted the people of his country more freedom from
censorship, facilitated the spread of western music, jazz or rock and roll,
within the USSR.

+ + +

The
Beatles are a very early example of Globalization: a cultural phenomenon that
affected youth in every corner of the world. The Beatles learned American music
in England, honed their skills by playing for American, British, and German
audiences in Hamburg, and proved to American record executives that the US no
longer cornered the market on big musical acts. Through the Beatles,
American-style rock music and the youth counter-culture that went along with it
made its way behind the Iron Curtain in a huge way. Soviet parents, much like
their American and British counterparts, scratched their heads in bewilderment
at their children's love of British rock 25 years before the wall
fell.

The
Beatles were far from the first western music heard in the Soviet Union. Western
popular culture made its first real headway in the form of American Jazz
immediately following World War II. In the 50s, Elvis, Bill Haley, and Chubby
Checker and the Twist also made their way into the USSR. But not even Elvis
Presley got the reaction that the Beatles got.

As Ryback
writes in Rock Around the Bloc, during the 1950s, young people around the
Soviet Empire had their own western-influenced fads and fashions: Russian
stiliagi hung out around Gorky Prospekt in Moscow; The Czech
pásek hung out in Wenceslaus Square, pinned American cigarette labels to
their ties and chewed paraffin wax (in lieu of Western-styled chewing gum).
Poland had the bikiniarze. Hungary had the jampec.33The Eastern European and Soviet Youth who embraced
the Beatles after 1964 differed than those who had danced to the music of Bill
Haley and Elvis Presley in 1956 because “Beatlemania swept away many of the
national and social distinctions. The Beatle look became de rigueur. In the
Soviet Union, Beatle fans wore jackets without lapels called bitlovka. In
Poland, bitels, as Beatles fans became known, sported Beatles buttons
sent by relatives in the West. In Budapest Hungarian Beatles fans cut their hair
into Beatles-frizura, tailored their coats into Beatles-kábat, and
proudly pounded the streets in boots they dubbed
Beatles-cipö.34”

Many
Eastern European and Russians writers who grew up behind the Iron Curtain concur
with this sentiment. The book Strings for a Beatle Bass: The Beatles
Generation in the USSR
is a fascinating first-hand account
of growing up a Beatle fan in the USSR, and its author, Dr. Yury
Pelyushonok35
recalls how the name ‘Beatly’
made it to the Russian lexicon even before the music did (basically meaning
western-influenced music). He also reminisced about hearing Can’t Buy Me
Love played as background music in a Soviet documentary about the
decadent Capitalist West. The song had been picked by the producers as “an
example of something disgusting, noisy, and bourgeois.” The effect on the
audience, however, was the opposite, and the kids would gather around the
courtyard to listen to the song coming from the apartment window of one lucky
enough to have a TV.36

As Trey
Donovan Drake writes in The Historical Political Development of Soviet
Rock Music, “their [The Beatles’] style inspired the Soviet
rockers to form what they called ‘beatle bands.’ Alexander Gradsky was one of
the leaders of a beatle band, whose uncle danced in the Moiseev Ballet
company…His uncle brought him Beatles records from abroad which ‘put him in a
state of shock...everything except the Beatles became pointless.’ It was no
longer an expression of trendiness or snobbery-fans repaid the Beatles in kind
for the sincerity they felt in their music.”

In a 1996
Kiev Post article titled “Communism Destroyed,” Alexander Zheleznjak writes,
“Their names were John, Paul, George and Ringo. The Four that destroyed
Communism inside of me. And it was loooong [sic] before ‘glasnost’ and
‘perestroika.’ It was even long before Leonid Brezhnev announced that we had
built ‘developed socialism’ in the Soviet Union…The first Beatles’ song I heard
was ‘A Hard Day’s Night.’ It was a revelation. It was so beautiful and so clear
that I, a naive teenager, thought everyone listening to the song must feel the
same way. Then came their other songs and, step-by-step, I turned into a fan of
the group.”

In an
article titled “You Say You Want a Revolution” published in the August 2003
issue of History Today, Mikhail Safonov (senior researcher at the
Institute of Russian History at St Petersburg) gives another first-hand account
of the Beatle’s influence on his generation. He writes “The name of [Mark David]
Chapman has become linked with that of Lennon, as other murderers are connected
to their victims: Brutus and Caesar, Charlotte Corday and Jean-Paul Marat.
Paradoxically, Lennon himself can be linked with the name of the Soviet Union in
just the same manner. It was Lennon who murdered the Soviet Union.”

“He did
not live to see its collapse, and could not have predicted that the Beatles
would cultivate a generation of freedom-loving people throughout this country
that covers one-sixth of the Earth. But without that love of freedom, the fall
of totalitarianism would have been impossible, however bankrupt economically the
communist regime may have been…the music came to us from an unknown,
incomprehensible world, and it bewitched us.37”

As Reuters
reported on May 24, 2003, while Paul McCartney was touring Russia, he heard a
similar story from the current Russian president: The story reads “President
Vladimir Putin has told Paul McCartney the Beatles, hugely popular in Soviet
times despite being frowned on as propagandists for an alien ideology, had been
a breath of fresh air for Russians.” “‘It was very popular, more than popular,’
Putin said when asked whether he had listened to
the Beatles when contacts with Western pop music were discouraged. “It was like
a breath of fresh air, like a window on to the outside world.”

In his
March 1996 article on the Czech band “The Plastic People of the Universe” (more
on them later), Joseph Yanosik wrote that “the story [of the Plastic People of
the Universe] begins, of course, with the Beatles and 1964 (the Beatles’
influence was seen clearly in the title of the Plastic
People’s album, Egon
Bondy’s Happy Hearts Club Banned,
pictured at right38). It is imperative to
understand that Beatlemania was not an isolated event limited to America and the
United Kingdom. Young people throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had
their lives changed by John Lennon and the Beatles. Since the beginning of the
Cold War, kids from the eastern side of the Iron Curtain had hungered for all
things American as an escape from their cultural isolation. American jazz had
served this purpose in the late 1940's through the fifties. The gates were then
kicked open by Elvis and Bill Haley, but it was the Beatles who brought down the
wall.”

+ + +

But what
might have been even as important for the West than the ideological victory was
the fact that rock and roll and western pop culture created a demand for western
products. Since LP versions of records were confiscated by the Soviet
authorities, resourceful music fans used X-ray plates, flexi-discs, and if they
were privileged enough, tape recorders (with the help of radio DJs playing
entire albums uninterrupted so they could be recorded). But these pirated copies
were of very poor quality. To follow the fashion of their idols, blue jeans were
equally in demand. A thriving black market provided young people with records,
instruments, and jeans smuggled-in from the West. Eventually, the Soviet
authorities saw the financial gains in creating official Vocal Instrument
Ensembles, or “VIAs” and releasing officially authorized releases of Russian
rock groups, and even of some Beatles singles. In short, the Beatles spawned a
cultural revolution that can be thought of as “creeping Capitalism.” Even though
they were Soviet ‘beatle’ bands popping up all over Russia and Eastern Europe,
there were practically no Soviet-made guitars until 1965. “Many groups were
forced to make their own instruments or purchase copies of Western guitars that
were produced by unofficial manufacturers. One of these manufacturers in 1969
managed to publish in a popular mechanical magazine a technique of converting an
acoustic guitar into an electric one using a telephone voice coil, and shortly
thereafter there were reportedly no functioning public
telephones in all of Moscow. Such activities only called more attention to the
growing youth cultural trends, and would cause the Soviet officials from time to
time to call for anti-rock action. 39”

And, in
hindsight, although both sides were caught up in the paranoia of the era, the
Soviet officials’ fears turned out to be right. A generation of young people
across national boundaries—on both sides of the Iron Curtain—were sharing a
common ground with each other in the form of rock and roll music. This shared
cultural experience and the message of “All You Need is Love” provided young
people in Soviet Bloc countries with a reason to not fear the people that they
had always been told were their enemy. It also planted the notion that the
Communist authority, not the Imperialist west, was the actual barrier between
themselves and happiness.

As
acclaimed Czech director Milos Forman said the Beatles brought down the
communism that caused him to spend most of his life in the US…It has long been
an argument that teenagers' desire for blue jeans and western music brought down
the Iron Curtain. But Forman maintained it was actually the regime's criticism
of the “fabulous” Beatles that punched a hole in their own credibility.
“Suddenly the ideologues are telling you this is decadent, these are four apes
escaping from the jungle. I thought I'm not such an idiot that I love this music
and suddenly these political ideologues were strangers.40”

In “You
Say You Want a Revolution,” Safonov writes “the more the authorities fought the
corrupting influence of the Beatles - or ‘Bugs’ as they were nicknamed by the
Soviet media (the word has negative connotations in Russian) - the more we
resented this authority, and questioned the official ideology drummed into us
from childhood…the history of the Beatles' persecution in the Soviet Union is
the history of the self-exposure of the idiocy of Brezhnev's rule. The more they
persecuted something the world had already fallen in love with, the more they
exposed the falsehood and hypocrisy of Soviet ideology.41”

Even when
the Beatles songs were officially released, Safonov writes “all the songs were
named correctly, but they were credited to "a vocal-instrumental group" -
rather as if A Hero of our Time were published in England, but instead of MY Lermontov's name, the publisher put simply “a writer. It was these details that
forced eople to feel the full inhumanity of the regime. Why did the communists
persecute the Beatles to such an extent? Deep down, the communists felt that the
Beatles were a concealed and potent threat to their regime. And they were right.
Beatlemania washed away the foundations of Soviet society because a person
brought up with the world of the Beatles, with its images and message of love
and non-violence, was an individual with internal freedom. Although the Beatles
barely sang about politics (our country was directly mentioned only once in
their repertoire, in Back in the USSR), one could argue that the Beatles did
more for the destruction of totalitarianism than the Nobel prizewinners
Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov. 42”

+ + +

This
resentment towards Soviet authorities who would put down western rock and roll
is very important because of the before mentioned Plastic People of the
Universe. In his 1996 article, Yanosik wrote “The Plastic People were ultimately
a major catalyst to the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe. History would
most surely have been very different without them. Apart from the aforementioned
Beatles and the Velvet Underground, there's not a lot of rock and roll bands you
can say that about.”

Yanosik
writes this about the Plastic People because of their role as the origin for the
creation of Charter 77, the human rights document that would bring rock and roll
fan43
and playwright Vaclav Havel into
the world of politics. The band was formed after the brief explosion of pop
culture that came in the 1968 Prague Spring with Alexander Dubcek's
liberalization of communism. Mirroring their Western long-haired contemporaries,
for a while the much abused peace, love and freedom ethos of the hippy culture
actually meant something more than annoying people with short
hair.44
It was their arrest in 1976 on
trumped-up charges of “disturbing the peace” that galvanized Czechoslovakia's
leading artists, writers and intellectuals—including Havel—to draw up Charter
77. In May, 1986, the dissident playwright told a British journalist that Havel
political change was coming in Czechoslovakia—not from above but from below,
from what he called “the fifth column of social conscio usness.45” Havel knew what the Czech people knew: the nation
that claimed Milan Kundera, Franz Kafka and President playwright Vaclav Havel
believed that words are tantamount.46 How appropriate that the man who would eventually
reach the presidency of a formerly repressive Communist country after the
peaceful Velvet Revolution of 1989, a man with such strong roots in the 60s
counterculture movement, would be a native Bohemian.

In his
book Open Letters: Selective Writings, 1965-1990, Havel explained the
importance of the Plastic People, rock and roll, and Charter 77 to the history
of his country:

UNDENIABLY, the most important
political event in Czechoslovakia after the

advent
of the Husak leadership in 1969 was the appearance of Charter 77.
The

spiritual and intellectual
climate surrounding its appearance, however, was not

the
product of any immediate political event. That climate was created by
the

trial
of some young musicians associated with a rock group called “The
Plastic

People
of the Universe.”

Their
trial was not a confrontation of two differing political forces
or

conceptions, but two differing
conceptions of life. On the one hand, there was

the
sterile Puritanism of the post totalitarian establishment and, on the
other

hand,
unknown young people who wanted no more than to be able to live
within

the
truth, to play the music they enjoyed, to sing songs that were relevant to
their

lives,
and to live freely in dignity and partnership. These people had no
past

history of political activity.
They were not highly motivated members of the

opposition with political
ambitions, nor were they former politicians expelled

from
the power structures. They had been given every opportunity to adapt
to

the
status quo, to accept the principles of living within a lie and thus to
enjoy life

undisturbed by the
authorities. Yet they decided on a different course. Despite

this,
or perhaps precisely because of it, their case had a very special impact
on

everyone who had not yet given
up hope. Moreover, when the trial took place, a

new
mood had begun to surface after the years of waiting, of apathy and
of

skepticism toward various
forms of resistance. People were “tired of being

tired”; they were fed up with
the stagnation, the inactivity, barely hanging on in

the
hope that things might improve after all. In some ways the trial was the
final

straw.
Many groups of differing tendencies which until then had
remained

isolated from each other,
reluctant to cooperate, or which were committed to

forms
of action that made cooperation difficult, were suddenly struck with
the

powerful realization that
freedom is indivisible. Everyone understood that an

attack
on the Czech musical underground was an attack on a most
elementary

and
important thing, something that in fact bound everyone together: it was
an

attack
on the very notion of living within the truth, on the real aims of life.
The

freedom to play rock music was
under stood as a human freedom and thus as

essentially the same as the
freedom to engage in philosophical and political

reflection, the freedom to
write, the freedom to express and defend the various

social
and political interests of society.

People
were inspired to feel a genuine sense of solidarity with the
young

musicians and they came to
realize that not standing up for the freedom of

others, regardless of how
remote their means of creativity or their attitude to life,

meant
surrendering one's own freedom. (There is no freedom without
equality

before
the law, and there is no equality before the law without freedom;
Charter

77 has
given this ancient notion a new and characteristic dimension, which
has

immensely important
implications for modern Czech history. What Sladecek,

the
author of the book Sixty-eight, in a brilliant analysis, calls the
“principle of

exclusion,” lies at the root
of all our present-day moral and political misery. This

principle was born at the end
of the Second World War in that strange collusion

of
democrats and communists and was subsequently developed further
and

further, right to the bitter
end. For the first time in decades this principle has

been
overcome, by Charter 77: all those united in the Charter have, for the
first

time,
become equal partners. Charter 77 is not merely a coalition of
communists

and
noncommunists-that would be nothing historically new and, from the
moral

and
political point of view, nothing revolutionary-but it is a community that
is a

priori
open to anyone, and no one in it is a priori assigned an inferior
position.)

This
was the climate, then, in which Charter 77 was created. Who could
have

foreseen that the prosecution
of one or two obscure rock groups would have

such
far-reaching consequences?47

Havel’s
concept of “Power to the Powerless” was very much in line with Lennon’s ideas of
“Power to the People.48” The utopian ideas that Lennon spoke about, such as
peace, justice for the working class, and socialist democracy was
basically the same ideas of “Socialism with a Human Face,” the idea brought
about by Alexander Dubcek and later Mikhail Gorbachev. These new Communist
leaders of Soviet Union saw hope in the idea of socialism, but saw the dire need
for reform of the old totalitarian ways of the Party.

And so did
John Lennon. In February 1972, when being interviewed by Alan Smith for Hit
Parader magazine, Lennon states that “they [members of the American and British
Establishment] knock me for saying 'Power To The People' and say that no one
section should have the power. Rubbish. The people aren't a section. The people
means everyone…I think that everyone should own everything equally and that
people should own part of the factories and they should have some say in who is
the boss and who does what. Students should be able to select teachers…It may be
like communism but I don't really know what real communism is. There is no real
communism state in the world—you must realize that Russia isn't. It's a fascist
state. The socialism I talk about is ‘British socialism,’ not where some daft
Russian might do it or the Chinese might do it. That might suit them. Us, we'd
rather have a nice socialism here...”

+ + +

When
Lennon was assassinated on December 8, 1980, both American and Soviet leaders
called him a hero and both sides praised his memory. “The bitter irony of this
tragedy,” mourned Komsomolskaia pravda two days later, “is that a person
who devoted his songs and music to the struggle against violence has himself
become its victim.49” After his assassination, grieving fans in Prague
and Sofia both created “Lennon Walls” as memorials to the fallen Beatle, which
came to represent not only a memorial to Lennon and his ideas, but also a
monument to free speech and the non-violent rebellion of Czech youth against the
repressions of neo-Stalinism.

In his
excellent essay on the Lennon Wall in Prague, Ron Synovitz writes “as John
Lennon's ideals for peace thrived under totalitarianism at Prague's 'Lennon
Wall' and helped inspire the non-violent “Velvet Revolution” that led to the
fall of Communism in the former Czechoslovakia.”

“Shortly
after Lennon's death in 1980, under the ever-watchful eyes of the Communist
secret police, an anonymous group of Prague youth set up a mock grave for the
ex-Beatle. The event was spontaneous, much in the same way that fans in New York
City had gathered at Central Park upon hearing of Lennon's death. But unlike the
gathering in New York, mourners in Prague risked prison for what authorities
called “subversive activities against the state.”

“The Wall
quickly took on a political focus and, inevitably, developed into a forum for
grievances against the Communist state. Lennon marches also started to take
place each year on Dec. 8. Those marches ultimately became linked to dissident
protests on International Human Rights Day -- December 10.

Participants in those early
marches say they were channeled through a gauntlet of uniformed and
plain-clothes police. Many were jailed or beaten for joining the
marches50.”

Ryback
writes about the Sofia Lennon Wall, which was also an important political forum
because an incident there that served as the first test for Bulgarian style
glasnost :

On
December 8, 1986, ten high-school students from class 8C of the
Dimitur

Polyanov High School solemnly
paraded through the streets of the Bulgarian

capital bearing a wreath they
intended to place at Sofia's unofficial Lennon

Wall,
the facade of the city's notary building located in the Ignatiev
Street.

When
the procession arrived at the memorial, one of the youths wrote on
the

`wall
in English: “John, you are in our hearts.” The police appeared
minutes

later
and apprehended the fourteen year olds. Following an interrogation at the
',

police
station, the youths were released and their families each fined
two

hundred leva.

A
letter was subsequently sent to schools and factories in Sofia warning
officials

to be
on the lookout for “spontaneous youth groups under foreign
ideological

influence.” Almost
immediately, a response appeared in the city paper
Pogled

defending the students and
criticizing officials for having reacted with such

harshness to a peaceful
tribute to John Lennon. A public debate quickly emerged

in the
pages of Pogled. Panayot Bonchev, the district's deputy chairman of
the

People's Council, defended the
government actions. He criticized the youths'

practice of organizing
themselves into unofficial groups and also leveled

criticism against the deceased
former Beatle. “John Lennon,” wrote Bonchev,

“was
only 20% a fighter for peace and 80% the product of Western
democracy.

“Bonchev's letter infuriated
Lennon fans. Pogled received over two hundred

letters of protest, mostly
from young people defending the actions of the ten

students and condemning the
“incompetence and insensitivity” of government

officials. One protester,
responding to Bonchev's assessment of Lennon,

suggested the ten students may
have avoided arrest had they written: “John, we

love
only 20% of you.”

On
January 27, 1987, Todor Zhivkov seemed to tilt the scales
against

government hard-liners when,
in the spirit of glasnost, he urged public criticism

of
inefficient government organizations and ministries. Rock-music
supporters

rallied. On March 25, 1987,
Uchitelsko delo, the educators' newspaper,

demanded more television and
radio exposure for rock music to overcome the

air of
“stagnation” lingering on the official music scene. In April 1987,
Dimitr

Spasov, a specialist on youth
policy, wrote an article in Pogled calling for public

tribuna began writing
prolifically about rock music. In May 1987, Bulgaria

sponsored its first official
rock festival, Rokfestival '87.51

The Prague
Lennon Wall continued to be a force for democracy in the years leading up to
1989. As Synovitz writes “the threat of prison couldn't keep people from
slipping into [Wenceslas] square at night to scrawl graffiti epitaphs in
honor of their underground hero. The Communist police tried repeatedly to
whitewash over the graffiti but they could never manage to keep the wall clean.
Paintings of Lennon began to appear along with lyrics of his songs. The wall
quickly took on a political focus and, inevitably, developed into a forum for
grievances against the Communist state. Even the installation of surveillance
cameras and the posting of an overnight guard couldn't stop the opinions from
being expressed.52”

+ + +

On Nov. 9,
1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Days later in Czechoslovakia, the peaceful
revolution continued in the form of popular, but peaceful, rallies. In an
article on Havel in January 2003, writer Ondrej Hejma wrote “a rally on the
morning of Friday, Nov. 17 seemed routine enough. But at dusk, as some 10,000
people marched toward Wenceslas Square, police cracked down hard. Hundreds were
injured. ‘You have lost already,’ demonstrators chanted the next day, and the
next, gradually swelling to a crowd of hundreds of thousands. In a couple of
weeks, it was all over. The Iron Curtain was being rolled up, and on Dec. 29,
Havel stood before a parliament still dominated by communist holdovers and laid
out his hopes of becoming the country's first democratic president in half a
century. “I promise not to let you down,” Havel said in his nomination speech,
pledging fair and free elections. And free they were - almost absurdly so. Rock
stars Frank Zappa and Lou Reed were among those helping a motley crew of
bohemians to mount an election campaign. As the Soviet army began leaving, the
Rolling Stones arrived. ‘The tanks are rolling out, the Stones are rolling in,’
posters proclaimed. Havel had won - and the communists were
finished.53”

Conclusion

What marked the end of the
August 1991 day that saw the collapse of Communism in the

USSR? a) a military parade
on the Red Square, or b) a huge, open-air rock 'n' roll

concert in Moscow,
organized by the defenders of the White House.

Should there be any
difficulties in answering this question, Keith Richards can provide
a

hint: “After those
billions of dollars, and living under the threat of doom, what brought
it

down? Blue jeans and rock
'n' roll.”

- Closing
lines of a letter from

Dr. Yury
Pelyushonok to the

London
Guardian dated December 2,
2000

Did the
Sixties Counterculture that Lennon represented really change America? In many
ways, yes, but in the way that Nixon, Hoover, and others feared, i.e. violent
revolution, falling dominoes, and the birth of a “Soviet America,” it most
definitely did not.

On October
10, 2001, MTV news reported that “The Beatles may have been the most powerful
rock band of 2001 thanks to their hits package 1…The Fab Four ranked
third on the power list—behind Tom Cruise and Tiger Woods—with earnings of $70
million for the year.54” On March 11, 1997, the Queen of England knighted
Paul McCartney. Fellow 60s rabble-rouser Mick Jagger was given the same honor on
December 12, 2003. At the turn of the century, The Beatles were still a
Capitalistic, moneymaking machine, and Britain's rebel youth of the 60s had
become their old guard. 55

But the
same cannot be said for the Soviet Empire. The inundation of Western culture and
the message of peace forever changed the generation. As frivolous as it seems, a
cultural force like music can be very powerful, and Russia in particular has a
history of using the arts as a vehicle for social change. During Imperial
Russia, Russian intelligentsia used works of fiction, like Eugene Onegin
and What is to Be Done? to

protest the repressive
tsarist regime. During the Soviet regime, they used rock and
roll.56
Rock and roll served as a
lightning rod for the demand for cultural freedom, and an all important symbol
of that freedom. The Beatles legacy in Russia could very well be that The Lennon
Wall brought down the Berlin Wall.